1993 Booker Prize 1993 Booker Prize Winner: Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle Shortlist Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha Roddy Doyle Cover photograph: Derek Speirs/Report Dustjacket synopsis: "It is 1968. Patrick Clarke is ten. He loves George Best, Geronimo and the smell of his hot water bottle. He hates zoos, kissing and the boys from the Corporation houses. He can't stand his little brother. He wants to be a missionary like Father Damien. He coerces the McCarthy twins and Willy Hancock into playing lepers. He never picks the scabs off his knees before they're ready. "Kevin is his best friend. Their names are all over Barrytown, written with sticks in wet cement. They play football, knick-knack, jumping to the bottom of the sea. Shoplifting. Robbing Football Monthly means four million years in purgatory. But a good confession before you died and you'd go straight to heaven. "He wants to know why no one jumped in for him when Charles Leavy had been going to kill him. He wants to stop his da arguing with his ma.

He's confused: he sees everything but he understands less and less. "Witty and poignant, earthy and exuberant, Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha charts the triumphs, indignities and bewilderment of Patrick Clarke and his world, a place full of warmth, cruelty, love and slaps across the face." First Paragraph: We were coming down our road. Kevin stopped at a gate and bashed it with his stick. It was Missis Quigley's gate; she was always looking out the window but she never did anything. -Quigley! Photography: Damien Laurent Dustjacket synopsis: " At the heart of Scar Tissue is a son's account of his mother's voyage into a world of neurological disease, losing her memory and then her very identity, only to gain - at the very end - a strange serenity.

Obsessed with his mother's transformation, the son sets out on his own quest for self-discovery." Quotes: "No recent British novel has traversed the worlds of reason and emotion, the human presence and its annihilation, so effectively and directly" - Pat Kane, New Statesman "Both moving and intellectually challenging...a novel of rare resonance" - David Robson, Sunday Telegraph "Ignatieff's novel impresses in its wisdom as much as in its restraint...this is a rich novel written by a magnamimous writer with an exquisite talent for naturalism" - Michael Wright, The Times First Paragraph: I do not want to remember her last hour. I do not want to be eternally condemned to think of her as she was in those final moments, when we held her hands, my brother and I, and she fought for life and lost, her mouth stretched open, gasping for breath, her eyes staring sightlessly up into the lights. That scene goes on and on, as if it will never end, as if some unreconciled part of me denies that it actually occurred.

I still have days when everything she ever was, everything she ever meant to me is entirely erased by the memory of those great agonising breaths, that frail body wracked with spasms, those lips wet with blood. There must be some way to redeem this, some way to believe that the banal heartlessness of it all was not for nothing. There must be some way back to the unscarred beginnings, when she was in her painting clothes, barefoot, sipping a beer, humming to herself, happy and far away. That is how she should be remembered. That is what I must rescue from her dying, if such a thing can be done. From the Vintage paperback edition, 1992. Jacket design: Jeff Fisher Dustjacket synopsis: "In the mid-1840s, a thirteen-year-old boy, Gemmy Fairley, is cast ashore in the far north of Australia and taken in by aboriginies. Sixteen years later, when settlers reach the area, he moves back into the world of Europeans, men and women who are staking out their small patch of home in an alien place, hopeful and yet terrified of what it might do to them.

"Given shelter by the McIvors, the family of the children who originally made contact with him, Gemmy seems at first to be guaranteed a secure role in the settlement, but there are currents of fear and mistrust in the air. To everyone he meets - from George Abbot, the romantically aspiring young teacher, to Mr Frazer, the minister, whose days are spent with Gemmy recording the local flora; from Janet McIvor, just coming to adulthood and discovering new versions of the world, to the eccentric Governor of Queensland himself - Gemmy stands as a different kind of challenge, as a force which both fascinates and repels. And Gemmy himself finds his own whiteness as unsettling in this new world as the knowledge he brings with him of the savage, the aboriginal. "A magnificent portrait of a continent and a searing account of the ordeals of settlement and first contact with the unknown, Remembering Babylon has the poetic intensity that marked Malouf's An Imaginary Life.

The result is a rich and compelling novel, written in language of astonishing poise and resonance, and immensely powerful in its vision of human differences and eternal divisions." First Paragraph: One day in the middle of the nineteenth centrury, when settlement in Queensland had advanced little more than halfway up the coast, three children were playing at the edge of a paddock when they saw something extraordinary. They were two little girls in patched gingham and a boy, their cousin, in short pants and braces, all three barefooted farm children not easily scared. They had little opportunity for play but had been engaged for the past hour in a game of the boy's devising: the paddock, all clay-packed stones and ant trails, was a forest in Russia - they were hunters on the track of wolves. From the Chatto & Windus hardback edition, 1993. Note: Jacket photograph by Mike Smallcombe. Jacket design by Carol Devine Carson Dustjacket synopsis: "'A desperate foolishness. The crops failed.

I sold my children.' "So begins Caryl Phillips's superb new novel: a voice speaking out of a distant past describing the consequences of his desperation - his daughter and two sons condemned to the hold of an English slave ship bound for America in 1753. What follow are the stories of these children: Nash, Martha and Travis. Yet as the narrative unfolds, we come to understand that although they are his children, they are also all of slavery's children: Nash, returning to Africa in the 1830s a Christian-educated adult, a missionary to the new territory of Liveria, slowly becoming a part of the world his 'masters' intended him to convert...Martha, her own daughter and husband sold away from her, settling in the American 'wild west' of the late nineteenth century, freeing herself from slavery but never from the weight of 'such misery in one life'...Travis, an American GI stationed in a small Yorkshire village during the Second World War, finding an acceptance in England that he doesn't know at home and that he may not be able to promise his half-English son...

"These brilliantly resonant stories - along with the slave ship captain's journal and lamentations of the children's father - become a 'many-tongued chorus of a common memory' so vivid and powerful that it bridges the gaps between continents and centuries, inextricably linking the many generations of the African diaspora, one to the other. "Crossing the River - masterfully conceived and crafted, driven by a powerful emotional force - is a bold confirmation of Caryl Phillips's singular gifts." First Paragraph: A desparate foolishness. The crops failed. I sold my children. I remember. I led them (two boys and a girl) along weary paths, until we reached the place where the mud flats are populated with crabs and gulls. Returned across the bar with the yawl, and prayed a while in the factory chapel. I watched as they huddled together and stared up at the fort, above which flew a foreign flag. Stood beneath the white-washed walls of the factory, waiting for the yawl to return and carry me back over the bar. In the distance stood the ship into whose keep I would soon condemn them. The man and his company were waiting to once again cross the bar. We watched a while.

And then approached. Approached by a quiet fellow. Three children only. I jettisoned them at this point, where the tributary stumbles and swims out in all directions to meet the sea. Bought 2 strong man-boys, and a proud girl. I soiled my hands with cold goods in exchange for their warm flesh. A shameful intercourse. I could feel their eyes upon me. Wondering, why? I turned and journeyed back along the same weary paths. I believe my trade for this voyage has reached its conclusion. And soon after, the chorus of a common memory began to haunt me. From the Knopf hardback edition, 1994. Cover photograph by David Purdie. Front cover design by Andrea Pinnington Dustjacket synopsis: "This is the story of Daisy Goodwill, from her birth on a kitchen floor in Manitoba, Canada, to her death in a Florida nursing home nearly ninety years later. Her ordinary life is made extraordinary in the telling." Quotes: "It is wonderful. A treat" - Joanna Trollope "I can think of few novels containing so much that is resonant and unforgettable, or that invite the reader to particpiate so fully and rewardingly.

The Stone Diaries is a triumphant and important book and deserves a wide audience" - Sunday Telegraph "Rapturous, sensitive and funny." - Guardian "The best novel we are likely to see this year." - Independent "If it does not win the Booker Prize for Fiction it will because it is too good." - Scotland on Sunday "A novel of an altogether superior kind." - Anita Bookner First Paragraph: My mother's name was Mary Stone Goodwill. She was only thirty years old when she took sick, a boiling hot day, standing there in her back kitchen, making a Malvern pudding for her husband's supper. A cookery book lay open on the table: "Take some slices of stale bread," the recipe said, "and one pint of currants; half a pint of raspberries; four ounces of sugar; some sweet cream if available." Of course she's divided the recipe in half, there being just the two of them, and what with the scarcity of currants, and Cuyler (my father) being a dainty eater. A pick-and-nibble fellow, she calls him, able to take his food or leave it. From the Fourth Estate paperback edition, 1993.

Roddy Doyle makes shortlist for Carnegie Medal - Latest news - Writers Online Roddy Doyle Makes Shortlist For Carnegie Medal 12/03/2013 Share this story Roddy Doyle makes shortlist for Carnegie Medal fdd680b3-353f-4301-85f7-9e72524ff6da Booker-winner Doyle is in the running for the prestigious children's book award for A Greyhound of a Girl He won the Booker in 1993, for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. The only writer so far to win both the Booker and the Carnegie Medal is Penelope Lively. The Carnegie Medal , established in 1936, is awarded annually to the writer of an exceptional novel for children. The winner receoves a golden medal and £500-worth of books to donate to the library of their choice.

The shortlist for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2013 is: • The Weight of Water, Sarah Crossan (Bloomsbury) • A Greyhound Of A Girl, Roddy Doyle (Marion Lloyd Books) • Maggot Moon, Sally Gardner (Hot Key Books) • In Darkness, Nick Lake (Bloomsbury) • Wonder, RJ Palacio (Bodley Head) • Midwinterblood, Marcus Sedgwick (Indigo) • A Boy And A Bear In A Boat, Dave Shelton (David Fickling Books) • Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein (Electric Monkey) The winning titles will be announced at a ceremony in June. Register and sign up for our newsletter for late-breaking news, more competitions and exclusive content Book Talk: Roddy Doyle on music and language in 'The Guts' Book Talk: Roddy Doyle on music and language in 'The Guts' Patricia Reaney Pin it Share Irish author Roddy Doyle poses at the Soho Grand Hotel in Manhattan, in this November 8, 2004 file photo.

REUTERS/Mike Segar/files More By Patricia Reaney NEW YORK (Reuters) - Award-winning Irish author Roddy Doyle brings a few of his earliest characters back in his latest book, "The Guts", an achingly funny novel about some of life's more serious issues. Doyle is on his familiar Dublin turf in the book about Jimmy Rabbitte, the former manager of an Irish soul band who appeared in his first book "The Commitments" in 1987. His first novel was the start of The Barrytown Trilogy, which included "The Snapper" and "The Van", all of which were made into films. "The Commitments" has also been adapted for the stage and opened in London in October. In "The Guts" Rabitte is a middle-aged married father of four diagnosed with bowel cancer. He grapples with his illness, reunites with two old band members and deals with his teenage children, his struggling music business and his own mortality. Like his other books, most of "The Guts" is told through salty dialogue, with Doyle perfectly capturing the accent. "The language of Dublin is ripe with profanity," he said.

The former secondary school teacher who won the Booker Prize in 1993 for "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha," spoke to Reuters about writing novels, middle age and returning to old friends. Q: What made you decide to write books? A: It is not uncommon for teachers to be writers as well. When I finished college and started teaching in 1979/80 in the back of my mind I was thinking I had done a little bit of writing in college but I had never written fiction. I thought I read a lot of fiction and I would love to have a bash and see if I can do it. Q: Jimmy Rabbitte first appeared in "The Commitments". Why did you bring him back in "The Guts"? A: I have 10 novels finished now and only one of them stands alone, the one that won the Booker Prize "Paddy Clark, Ha, Ha, Ha". It's the only character I've never gone back to ...

I was writing about these things (people dying, children growing up) and I hadn't really thought of a novel but then I thought with the combination of things (I was experiencing) I should go back to a character I already know, rather than to invent a new one, and to see how he is really. Q: When you decided to use Jimmy Rabbitte did you also plan to bring back other characters from "The Commitments"? A: I knew I wouldn't bring them all back. It was never going to be "The Commitments" reformed. That's an atrocious idea. Running side-by-side with this was a project, a musical that opened last September in London based on "The Commitments". Q: There is very little description in the book. Most of the story is told through dialogue. It's a distinctive style. How did you develop it? A: Something clicked quite early on, and I started concentrating on the dialogue and making sure that the strength of the characters was in what they said, or didn't say. The initial nudge in that direction probably came from my teaching experience. ... For me the challenge became building up the characters by their accents, or trying to achieve their accents.

Q: Jimmy is a music fanatic and always has been. Is there a lot of you written into the character? A: Not a lot. I love music, but I am not involved in the industry at all. When I say I love music, I played a bit when I was shaving this morning. I know my stuff and I do listen a lot and I read a lot about music, but I am not as fanatical or as driven as Jimmy would be. The one thing that I did use (in the book) from my own life was that I started doing trumpet lessons. Q: You deal with serious subjects such as cancer, the economic recession, and the Irish economy and the impact they have on the characters' lives but in a very humorous way. A: I think essentially I see the world as comic in a way. I see it as confronting the world more than anything else. And I would like to think that if I ever did have cancer I would obviously take it very seriously. But one of the ways I would do that, particularly in terms of my relations with other people, is to make light of it. Q: Why are so many of your books about working class Dubliners?

A: In terms of the words and the language, it's home. I feel at home. The stories are in a way universal, I suppose, but when I have a character open up his or her mouth I feel like I know what they are saying, what they are wanting to say. (Editing by Eric Kelsey and Stephen Powell) Reblog Roddy Doyle - IMDb IMDb Won the Booker Prize in 1993 for the novel Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha See full bio » Born: a list of 464 people created 08 May 2011 a list of 75 people created 22 Sep 2013 Do you have a demo reel? Add it to your IMDbPage How much of Roddy Doyle's work have you seen? User Polls Won 1 BAFTA Film Award. Another 5 wins & 3 nominations.

See more awards » Known For 1996 The Van (novel) / (screenplay) 1994 Family (TV Mini-Series) (4 episodes) 1991 The Commitments (novel) / (screenplay) Hide 1996 The Van (co-producer - uncredited) Hide 2007 Movie Connections (TV Series documentary) Himself 1997 Face to Face (TV Series) Himself 1994 Fantasy Football League (TV Series) Himself - Guest Manager Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha (novel) See more » Publicity Listings: Did You Know? Personal Quote: [on the passage of time and his sons leaving home] I miss them. It's grief. You have to decide: is this going to bury me? Am I continually going to think, 'Well, that's another light that's gone out?' Or am I gonna kind of settle into this and enjoy myself? It's a decision you can make. I don't want to sound like some sort of fuckin' life coach, but you can open your head to new experiences.

See more » Trivia: He is a fan of Chelsea Football Club, London See more » Message Boards Snapper: Roddy Doyle: Trade Paperback: 9780140171679: Powell's Books Synopses & Reviews Publisher Comments Twenty-year-old Sharon Rabbitte is pregnant. She's also unmarried, living at home, working in a grocery store, and keeping the father's identity a secret. Her own father, Jimmy Sr., is shocked by the news. Her mother says very little. Her friends and neighbors all want to know whose "snapper" Sharon is carrying. In his sparkling second novel, Roddy Doyle observes the progression of Sharon's pregnancy and its impact on the Rabbitte family—especially on Jimmy Sr.—with wit, candor, and surprising authenticity. Synopsis The Commitments was praised as one of the freshest and funniest first novels in years. In The Snapper, Doyle has produced another brilliant comedy of everyday life in Dublin. A young single girl who shares a room with her sisters endures pregnancy while her family and the whole town wonder who the father is. About the Author Roddy Doyle is an internationally bestselling writer.

His first three novels—The Commitments, The Snapper, and the 1991 Booker Prize finalist The Van—are known as The Barrytown Trilogy. He is also the author of the novels Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (1993 Booker Prize winner), The Woman Who Walked into Doors, and A Star Called Henry, and a non-fiction book about his parents, Rory and Ita. Doyle has also written for the stage and the screen: the plays Brownbread, War, Guess Who's Coming for the Dinner, and The Woman Who Walked Into Doors; the film adaptations of The Commitments )as co-writer), The Snapper, and The Van; When Brendan Met Trudy (an original screenplay); the four-part television series Family for the BBC; and the television play Hell for Leather. Roddy Doyle has also written the children's books The Giggler Treatment, Rover Saves Christmas, and The Meanwhile Adventures and contributed to a variety of publications including The New Yorker magazine and several anthologies. He lives in Dublin.

What Our Readers Are Saying Roddy Doyle author biography email Roddy Doyle Biography Born in 1958 in Dublin, Roddy Doyle is a prolific Irish writer who has found over two decades-worth of material in the humorous, tender, and fraught life of the family. Americans may be most familiar with Doyle's wise-cracking dialog and its lilting Dublin intonations from the popular film adaptations of his Barrytown Trilogy: The Commitments (1987), The Snapper (1990), and The Van (1991). The three stories center around one middle-class Dublin family and their enterprises - a soul band, a teen pregnancy, a fish-and-chips van. In 1993, Doyle won the Man Booker Prize for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, a story told from the point of view of a ten-year-old boy living in the Barrytown section of north Dublin. For its language and perspective, the novel often draws comparisons with James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - connections, Doyle says, he hates.

He explains in a 2009 interview with The Guardian: If you're a writer in Dublin and you write a snatch of dialogue, everyone thinks you lifted it from Joyce. The whole idea that he owns language as it is spoken in Dublin is a nonsense. He didn't invent the Dublin accent. It's as if you're encroaching on his area or it's a given that he's on your shoulder. It gets on my nerves. His other novels for adults include The Woman Who Walked Into Doors (1996) and Paula Spencer (2006) - a pair of books about a woman recovering from an abusive marriage; and a historical trilogy - A Star Called Henry (1999), Oh, Play That Thing (2004), and The Dead Republic (2010) - about Henry Smart, an IRA assassin who fights in the 1916 rebellion, emigrates to America, and ends up writing for Hollywood. Among other works, Doyle has also published various short story collections, including Click (2007) and Magical Tales of Ireland (2003); and a nonfiction memoir about his parents, Rory and Ita (2002).

Doyle has dipped his pen in nearly every category of children's fiction. The Giggler Treatment (2000) is the first installment of a middle-grade trilogy about the Mack family and their dog Rover. The other books in the trilogy are Rover Saves Christmas (2001) and The Meanwhile Adventures (2004). For young adult readers, Wilderness (2007) is part family drama and part husky sled adventure. In 2008, Doyle made a foray into picture-book territory with Her Mother's Face (illustrated by Freya Blackwood) - a story about a girl who, like Emer in A Greyhound of a Girl, loses her mother when she is only three. In a 2011 interview with The Telegraph, Doyle speaks about his working method, which allows him to have several irons in the fire at once.

He describes working on A Greyhound of a Girl at the same time he was putting together Bullfighting, a collection of stories about "the vaguely comic despair of middle-aged manhood": If you are dealing with a family story like Greyhound and put that away for a day and then focus on the life of a middle aged man and think, well those characters share the same kitchen somehow and then it's fun to look at something from different perspectives. I work roughly from nine to six and there is no commute so if you sit and do nothing it seems like an eternity. So, actually, you have plenty of time to write. I might do three pages of Greyhound and then read a football website or hang out the washing and put on a coffee and by the time I come back I have had time to shed one and get ready for the other. Sometimes one leaks into the other, but I am reasonably good at identifying that. Doyle shares information about his writing process and his top ten pieces of advice for budding writers in a 2010 article in The Guardian, including: Do not place a photograph of your favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

Do give the work a name as quickly as possible. Own it, and see it. Dickens knew Bleak House was going to be called Bleak House before he started writing it. The rest must have been easy. Do keep a thesaurus, but in the shed at the back of the garden or behind the fridge, somewhere that demands travel or effort. Chances are the words that come into your head will do fine, eg "horse", "ran", "said". Do spend a few minutes a day working on the cover biog - "He divides his time between Kabul and Tierra del Fuego." But then get back to work. Roddy Doyle's website This bio was last updated on 04/25/2012. We try to keep BookBrowse's biographies both up to date and accurate, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's a tough task. So, please help us - if the information about a particular author is out of date or inaccurate, and you know of a more complete source, please let us know . Authors: If you wish to make changes to your bio, send your complete biography as you would like it displayed so that we can replace the old with the new.

Free books to read and review (US only) Find books by time period, setting & theme Read-alike suggestions by book and author Book club discussions Roddy Doyle On A Greyhound of a Girl What inspired you to write a novel about four generations of women? Two fictional women came together in my head. I wanted to write about a girl, just before she officially becomes a teenager, who feels and anticipates the changes that are happening to her. So, that was one of the women. I called her Mary. The other woman was inspired by my grandmother. She died in 1928, when my mother was a little girl. Obviously, I never knew her. I always wondered about herwhat she'd been like and what she would have been like if she'd lived to be an older woman. I decided to make her Mary's great-grandmother. Between these two women there had to be two more generationsMary's mother and grandmother. That made four: girl, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. They'd be very different but would have a lot in common too. Are the characters in A Greyhound Of a Girl inspired by women in your family or life?

Tansey, the great-grandmother, is inspired by my grandmother, whose name was actually Ellen. As I said, she died in 1928, of the flu. My mother was only three when it happened. It's a sad story. What makes it sadder is the fact that my mother grew up ... Books of The Times - Window Into the Mind of a 10-Year-Old Irish Boy - NYTimes.com Published: December 13, 1993 Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha By Roddy Doyle 282 pages. Viking Penguin. $20.95. "We were coming down our road. Kevin stopped at a gate and bashed it with his stick. It was Missis Quigley's gate; she was always looking out the window but she never did anything." So begins "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha," the fourth novel by the Irish writer Roddy Doyle, whose previous books include "The Commitments," "The Snapper" and "The Van," together known as Mr. Doyle's Barrytown Trilogy.

And so, with echoes of Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" ("there was a moocow coming down along the road"), the reader enters the mind of 10-year-old Patrick Clarke. Paddy is a bright, inquisitive child who is trying to negotiate a world that he sees with the utmost clarity and comprehends almost nothing about. Paddy's world is divided into extremes of danger and safety, which attract him equally. On warm, sunny days, he, his pals and his younger brother, Francis (nicknamed Sinbad) enjoy poking the tar bubbles in the road that runs through Barrytown: "You burst the bubble and the clean soft tar was under there; the top was gone off the bubble -- it was a volcano. Pebbles went in; they died screaming. "No no, please -- ! -- don't -- ! Aaaaaaaahaaah ----" Paddy is the bravest at exploring the open underground pipes of a new sewerage system: "Running through the pipe was the most frightening brilliant thing I'd ever done. . . .

You judged by the sound of your breath and feet -- you could tell when you were swerving up the side of the pipe -- until the dot of light at the end that got bigger and brighter, out the end of the pipe, roaring into the light, hands up, the winner." Yet Paddy seeks security: "Under the table was a fort. . . . I'd sit in there for hours. . . . I fell asleep in there; I used to. It was always cool in there, never cold, and warm when I wanted it to be. The lino was nice on my face. The air wasn't alive like outside, beyond the table; it was safe. It had a smell I liked." And: "My hot water bottle was red, Manchester United's color. Sinbad's was green. I loved the smell off the bottle. I put hot water in it and emptied it and smelled it; I put my nose to the hole, nearly in it. Lovely." Paddy's daily rounds of school and playtime are frightening tests of possibility, endurance and pain. In a horrifying passage he describes torturing his little brother.

"Sinbad's lips had disappeared because he was pressing them shut so hard; we couldn't get his mouth open. Kevin pressed the fuel capsule against his mouth but it wouldn't go in. I pinched Sinbad's arm; no good. This was terrible; in front of the others, I couldn't sort out my little brother. I got the hair above his ear and pulled it up; I lifted him: I just wanted to hurt him. His eyes were closed now as well but the tears were getting out. I held his nose. He gasped and Kevin shoved the capsule halfway into his mouth. Then Liam lit it with the match. "We said we'd get Liam to light it, me and Kevin, just in case we got caught. "It went like a dragon." Is this the act of psychopaths? You have to wonder, even though Paddy is capable of committing clumsily loving acts toward his brother as well as ones of extreme cruelty. What you eventually conclude is that Paddy is reacting to some pressure in his life of which he is not entirely aware. Perhaps this comes from the children in the public housing projects who increasingly encroach on Paddy's world.

Perhaps it is the international unrest of the late 1960's that prompts one local tabloid to announce in headlines that "World War Three Looms Near." Or perhaps it is something going on in Paddy's home. Mr. Doyle's novel, which won the 1993 Booker Prize in England, evokes the details of a child's everyday life with unusual intelligence and humor. Here is Paddy being taught by his father to ride a bike he has got for Christmas: "He held the back. He said nothing. I pedaled. We went down the garden. I went faster. I stayed up; he was still holding. I looked back. He wasn't there. I fell over. But I'd done it; I'd gone a bit without him. I could do it. I didn't need him now. I didn't want him." And here is Paddy watching his mother do the laundry. "The sheets were shiny with huge wet bubbles and my ma put a corner up to the mangle and turned the handle and the sheet rose out of the water like a whale being caught.

The water ran down the sheet and the bubbles were crushed as the sheet was pulled through the rolls and came out flat, looking like material again, the shininess all gone." Eventually, despite how the randomness of Paddy's daily experiences mirrors the reality of childhood, the formlessness threatens to pall. Almost precisely at this point, whatever is unconsciously troubling Paddy at last reveals itself: "It wasn't lots of little fights. It was one big one, rounds of the same fight. And it wouldn't stop after fifteen rounds like in boxing. It was like one of the matches from the olden days where they wore no gloves and they kept punching till one of them was knocked out or killed. Ma and Da had gone way past Round Fifteen; they'd been fighting for years -- it made sense now -- but the breaks between the rounds were getting shorter, that was the big difference. One of them would soon fall over." With remarkable sensitivity, Mr. Boyle dramatizes the effects of this discord on Paddy's demeanor. He shows how trouble at home propels Paddy from the warm, familiar comforts of childhood into a cold, indifferent world where the laughter of the novel's title finally echoes hollowly.

Photo: Roddy Doyle (Conor Horgan/Viking) Is It Autobiography or Fiction? But Then Does It Really Matter? - NYTimes.com Is It Autobiography or Fiction? But Then Does It Really Matter? By JOHN ROCKWELL, Published: December 20, 1993 DUBLIN, Dec. 14— For a man on the verge of being about as famous as serious contemporary authors can be, Roddy Doyle is acting pretty gun-shy. He grants interviews guardedly (although having committed to one, he responds forthrightly to questions). He implores journalists not to describe his home ("It's not just mine; it's ours," he explained today, the "ours" including his wife and two young children). He resents what he regards as personal attacks in reviews long (or not so long) past. This does not make him standoffish; just reserved with strangers. With a two-week publishing tour coming up in the United States next month, however, he'd better get used to interviews, since he'll be doing a lot of them. They will probably be very friendly indeed. The reason is that people like his novels, like his plays and like his screenplays.

In October, the 35-year-old Mr. Doyle's latest novel, "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" (Viking Penguin), written entirely in the voice of a 10-year-old Dublin boy as he observes the growing strains in his parents' marriage, won this year's Booker Prize, the prime British award for fiction. His previous novel "The Van" was on the Booker short list for 1991. Also this fall, Stephen Frears's film version of Mr. Doyle's novel before that, "The Snapper," about the mostly salutary effects of the pregnancy of a family's 20-year-old daughter, appeared to rapturous reviews and has been delighting art-house audiences ever since. Mr. Doyle wrote the screenplay for the "Snapper" film and wrote most of the screenplay for Alan Parker's film "The Commitments," which was based on Mr. Doyle's first novel, about a Dublin soul band. Mr. Doyle said he loved both films, but nonetheless he has moved steadily to increase his control over future film projects. "I went into 'The Commitments' quite naively," he said. "It was to be a small film and it got bigger and bigger.

Two other writers were brought in and I wasn't told about it for a year. I think I was lucky it ended up on Alan Parker's desk. It could very well have starred Michael J. Fox and been set in New York." For the film of "The Snapper," Mr. Doyle retained control of the project and eventually gave the rights to the BBC. With his next novel, "The Van," for which he has just completed the screenplay, he has formed a company with the producer Linda Myles, a veteran of the "Commitments" and "Snapper" projects, and will produce the film version himself. He has also written a four-part original screenplay for the BBC, "Family," now filming and scheduled for broadcast in Britain in late spring. "I wrote it at the same time as 'Paddy Clarke,' " he said. "It takes the same theme, marital breakdown, but from a different point of view." Once a Teacher After the lonely rigors of writing, Mr. Doyle enjoys the social aspects of film making. He regards it as a substitute for his 14 years of teaching grade-school English and geography in a Dublin public school, a job he finally gave up earlier this year.

(Serious and earnest, he still acts rather like a teacher, although the stud in his left ear hints at a friskier side.) But his film ambitions don't extend as far as directing. "I'd have loved Fellini to do 'The Van,' but he went and died on us," he said. "I have thought of directing, but I abandoned it. I don't have the visual sense. And working with actors is a mystery to me." All his involvement with film hardly means he conceives his novels as latent screenplays; that is a sore point with hostile Irish critics, who have accused him, in his words, of being a "machine, writing screenplays with an eye to the American market." "I never did that," he insisted. "I write them purely as novels. Now I've adapted three of them, and I can see why people say there's a film in them. But with 'Paddy Clarke,' I never thought it could be made into a film. It would have to be changed drastically. It is only with practice that I've come to realize just how different the two media are." Place and Time The vividness of the young Paddy's observations has prompted readers to wonder just how autobiographical the novel is.

Paddy Clarke is 10, the book takes place in 1968 and Mr. Doyle was born in 1958. But the author, who grew up in a north Dublin suburb not unlike his fictional Barrytown but who has long since led a more middle-class existence, said his latest book recalls his own life only in details, not in its plot. "The place is mine; the time is mine," he said. "There are memories of my own, running through a field and seeing pheasants fly up, balls of dust under the kitchen table. But the story isn't mine, I'm glad to say. My parents are still happily married, and have been for 44 years. My own kids are far too young to have been any help at all, and the kids I used to teach were 12 and 13, and that's a significantly different age than 10." Nonetheless, one wonders how autobiographical one passage in "Paddy Clarke" is, when Mr.

Doyle has his young protagonist recall: "I loved making up stuff; I loved the way the next bit came into my head,it made sense and expanded and I could keep going till I came to the end; it was like being in a race. I always won." After laboring through the early 1980's on a gigantic, never published political satire called "Your Granny's a Hunger Striker" ("It was the weight of a house brick," he said once), Mr. Doyle turned to a shorter, quicker subject and published "The Commitments" privately in 1986. It sold only 1,000 copies, but Heinemann in London picked it up and Mr. Doyle was on his way. Since then, he has always been popular with the Irish reading public, and "Paddy Clarke" was mostly admired by Irish critics, a turnaround Mr. Doyle attributes to steadily friendly British reviews and, now, the Booker accolades. "Up until 'Paddy Clarke,' the attitude to my work in Ireland was increasingly hostile," he said. "Many reviewers of 'The Van' bypassed the book and concentrated on me.

'The Van' being short-listed for the Booker shocked a lot of them. People had to reassess it, at the very least to point out why the British got it wrong. But then attitudes changed, and 'Paddy Clarke' was very well received." Still, whether he is "making up stuff," whether he is writing proper literature or just setting down real life like some docu-journalist, has been a constant source of debate, and one that still rankles. Irish critics, accustomed to the higher-flown raptures of so many great Irish writers, had their doubts. Especially since he uses mostly obscenity-laced dialogue in north Dublin dialect and once wrote a farcical play, "Brownbread," about three teen-age boys who kidnap a bishop. "My writing has been labeled photography with a word processor," Mr. Doyle said with evident bitterness. " 'It's not literature; anybody can do it.' The other complaint, which I think was fairer, was that it was insulting to the working class. Because my background is not working class, I was exploiting people." Given his extraordinary affection for his subjects, that last seems a stretch.

And his determined effort to expand his craft, to take on intimate details of family life and even the perspective of a 10-year-old, belies the accusation of journalism. Certainly no tape recorder could capture real life as pointedly as Mr. Doyle's creations. "It's fiction," he said of "Paddy Clarke." "It's pure spoof. I'm not too concerned, really, if it's actually accurate. I'm more concerned whether it's a good read: that people are convinced by it. Whether they're convinced because it's true or because they're convinced it's true, that's somebody else's problem." Photo: Roddy Doyle, whose novel "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" won the Booker Prize, the British award for fiction. (Derek Speirs/Report)

Question: With which book did Roddy Doyle win the 1993 Booker award?
Answer: 'PADDY CLARKE HA HA HA'